Job Security

The FBI has received substantial criticism over the past decade -- much of it valid -- but nobody can deny its record of excellence in thwarting its own Terrorist plots. Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out -- only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.

[examples]

None of these cases entail the FBI's learning of an actual plot and then infiltrating it to stop it. They all involve the FBI's purposely seeking out Muslims (typically young and impressionable ones) whom they think harbor animosity toward the U.S. and who therefore can be induced to launch an attack despite having never taken even a single step toward doing so before the FBI targeted them. [...] and new security measures are often implemented in response (the FBI's Terror plot aimed at the D.C. Metro, for instance, led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers' bags).

[...]

The U.S. is -- as it has continuously announced to the world -- a Nation at War. The Pentagon is the military headquarters for this war, and its troops abroad are the soldiers fighting it. In what conceivable sense can attacks on those purely military and war targets be labeled "Terrorism" or even illegitimate? The U.S. has continuously attacked exactly those kinds of targets in multiple nations around the world; it expressly tried to kill Saddam and Gadaffi in the wars against their countries (it even knowingly blew up an entire suburban apartment building to get Saddam, who wasn't actually there). What possible definition of "Terrorism" excludes those attacks by the U.S. while including this proposed one on the Pentagon and other military targets (or, for that matter, Nidal Hasan's attack on Fort Hood where soldiers deploy to war zones)?

  Glenn Greenwald

I know the answer to that: the American definition.

With regard to the targeted building that is not purely a military target -- the Capitol Building -- is that a legitimate war target under the radically broad standards the U.S. and its allies have promulgated for themselves? The American "shock and awe" assault on Baghdad destroyed "several government buildings and palaces built by Saddam Hussein"; on just the third day of that war, "U.S. bombs turn[ed] key government buildings in Baghdad into rubble." In Libya, NATO repeatedly bombed non-military government buildings. In Gaza, Israeli war planes targeted a police station filled with police recruits on the stated theory that a valid target "ranges from the strictly military institutions and includes the political institutions that provide the logistical funding and human resources" to Hamas.

He’s just trying to confuse us now, isn’t he?

With regard to the targeted building that is not purely a military target -- the Capitol Building -- is that a legitimate war target under the radically broad standards the U.S. and its allies have promulgated for themselves? The American "shock and awe" assault on Baghdad destroyed "several government buildings and palaces built by Saddam Hussein"; on just the third day of that war, "U.S. bombs turn[ed] key government buildings in Baghdad into rubble." In Libya, NATO repeatedly bombed non-military government buildings. In Gaza, Israeli war planes targeted a police station filled with police recruits on the stated theory that a valid target "ranges from the strictly military institutions and includes the political institutions that provide the logistical funding and human resources" to Hamas.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.